When a photo of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos standing in the snow beside an SUV went viral, it hit people in the gut. The Minnesota preschooler, bundled in a blue hat and backpack, had just come home from school when federal immigration agents took him and his father into custody in Columbia Heights, a suburb of Minneapolis.
Local officials, witnesses, and national outlets reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement not only detained the child, but used him to help carry out the raid. According to Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent Zena Stenvik, agents pulled Liam from a running car in his driveway and then told him to knock on the front door to see who else was inside — “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait,” she said.
Liam and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, were then transported 1,200 miles to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas. The family’s lawyer and school officials stress that the father entered legally through official channels and still has an active asylum case.
Witnesses and school staff say they begged ICE to let the boy stay with trusted adults instead of hauling him away. ICE ignored those requests, and the boy disappeared into a detention system already criticized for traumatizing children. He became at least the fourth student in the district detained in recent weeks, intensifying fear across the Minneapolis area.
That was the story the public first learned: a child pulled from a car, allegedly used during a raid, then taken halfway across the country with his father.
The Government’s Counter-Narrative
After the backlash, the Department of Homeland Security tried to flip the script. Spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin claimed ICE “did NOT target a child” and argued that the father “abandoned” his son while fleeing. In this account, agents merely stayed with the boy to “ensure his safety” before “reuniting” the family in detention.
In other words, DHS shifted the focus from ICE’s actions to the father’s supposed wrongdoing. Most mainstream outlets included this denial, but they also reported the eyewitness accounts that contradicted it.
How Fox News Turned That Into “Media Hoax” and “Egregious Lie”
Fox News didn’t just present DHS’s explanation — they built an entire outrage cycle around it.
In a Fox News Digital article titled “Media runs wild with ‘egregious lie’ ICE targeted 5-year-old in Minnesota”, the network accused ABC, CNN, the Associated Press, Axios, and the Washington Post of spreading a “hoax.”
Fox’s framing does three things:
Centers the government’s version as unquestionably true. Labels all other reporting as dishonesty or partisan propaganda. Portrays ICE as victims of unfair media coverage, instead of addressing whether a 5-year-old belonged in federal custody at all.
Their segments featured ICE officials and Republican lawmakers repeating the same message: the real story is liberal media lying about ICE.
This shifts the outrage away from the child and onto the press — a classic Fox pattern.
What Fox Leaves Out
To make their version work, Fox sidelines key facts:
Eyewitnesses say ICE used Liam to knock on the door. Multiple adults offered to take care of the boy — ICE declined. The family was in the U.S. legally, with an active asylum case. Mainstream outlets did publish DHS’s denial — Fox selectively shows only the headlines. Flying a 5-year-old to Texas and placing him in a detention center is still traumatizing regardless of spin.
Fox isn’t “setting the record straight.”
They’re redirecting public anger so the story becomes about the media — not the little boy caught in an ICE raid.
The Bottom Line
There are real, legitimate questions about this incident:
Did the father abandon the child, or was he grabbed first? Why was a 5-year-old taken to Texas instead of released to local caregivers? Why were so many children in that district swept up in raids within weeks?
Honest journalism digs into those questions. Fox’s approach avoids them by creating a simpler, more convenient villain — the media itself.
This is how the outrage gets rewritten:
turn a disturbing ICE operation into another culture-war story where Fox gets to decide who the public should be mad at.
Works Cited:
Associated Press. “Minnesota District Says ICE Agents Detained 5-Year-Old Boy, Used Him to Knock on Door.” AP News, 22 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/342f319fafb766d13afe07f5bcc1f112.
ABC News. “5-Year-Old Asylum Seeker Taken by ICE as Agency Expands Enforcement.” ABC News, 22 Jan. 2026, https://abcnews.go.com/US/5-year-asylum-seeker-detained-ice-expands-enforcement/story?id=129451987.
Fox News Digital. Holden, Drew. “Media Runs Wild with ‘Egregious Lie’ ICE Targeted 5-Year-Old in Minnesota, DHS Says Child Was Abandoned.” Fox News, 23 Jan. 2026, https://www.foxnews.com/media/media-runs-wild-egregious-lie-ice-targeted-5-year-old-minnesota-dhs-child-abandoned.
MPR News. Ibrahim, Mohammed. “Witnesses Say They Begged ICE Agents Not to Detain Minnesota 5-Year-Old After Father’s Arrest.” MPR News, 23 Jan. 2026, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/23/witnesses-say-they-begged-ice-agents-not-to-detain-minnesota-5yearold-after-fathers-arrest.
Scripps News. “Federal Officers Detain a 5-Year-Old Boy Who School Official Says Was Used as Bait.” Scripps News, 22 Jan. 2026, https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/immigration/federal-officers-detain-a-5-year-old-boy-who-school-official-says-was-used-as-bait.
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